Wednesday, January 13, 2016

Is Canada the canary in the coal mine? They're going crazy over high food prices!

It is often said that a free-floating currency acts as a shock absorber.But when Canadians go shopping for groceries these days, they're getting nothing but the shock—sticker shock, that is.On Tuesday, the Canadian dollar, commonly known as the loonie, broke below 70 U.S. cents for the first time since May 1, 2003.

For America's northern neighbor, which imports about 80 percent of the fresh fruits and vegetables its citizens consume, this entails a sharp rise in prices for these goods. With lower-income households tending to spend a larger portion of income on food, this side effect of a soft currency brings them the most acute stress.James Price, director of Capital Markets Products at Richardson GMP, recently joked during an interview on BloombergTV Canada that "we're going to be paying a buck a banana pretty soon."